Color is elemental for San Francisco artist Ron Nagle - whether it comes to the playful, offbeat juxtapositions of his ceramics, the hue of a house or the clash of a suit. The latter comes to mind when the longtime Mills College art professor reminisces about a jury duty stint spent studying a lawyer in a not-so-powerful mismatched black-and-blue power suit. Later in the jury room, Nagle and his fellow jurors agreed that their response to color hurt the lawyer's case. "If I see someone wearing a mismatched suit, their credibility is lowered by 50 percent," he quips now.

Specific shades - drawn from a "subdued and melancholy" "down palette," as Nagle puts it - play a large part in his teacup-size sculptures, pieces that, grouped together like a minor-key miniature forest, drew much attention at last year's Venice Biennale. As for Nagle, he might glean an idea from colors on the street: "How certain combinations affect you emotionally or make you feel a certain way - you can't put a finger on it. Colors can come from anything from fashion magazines to Japanese food presentation to hot rods to sometimes the art of other artists, people who are great colorists."

Nagle will be surrounded by some of those greats in "Color Shift" at the Berkeley Art Museum, a group exhibition of abstract works drawn mostly from the permanent collection, including a 1961 oil by Mark Rothko and a 1971 enamel over silkscreen grid by Jennifer Bartlett and seldom-seen objects like a chromatic color-chart-like 1967 oil by Robert Swain and a 1970 acrylic on a shaped canvas by Harvey Quaytman.

Curator Apsara DiQuinzio developed the show's conceptual framework as "something that's far-reaching and relevant to many different types of artists. It's a seemingly very simple concept, but in reality, it becomes quite complex when you look at how different artists look at and work with color."

Josef Albers and his color theories - in addition to the 2013 release of the 50th anniversary edition of "Interaction of Color" - are at the center of the show, along with his 1971 silkscreen "I-S VVII." Another touchstone is "Studio Visit," a recent book on Bay Area artists and perceptions of color, by local artist Linda Geary.

The subject also has particular relevance for younger artists, the curator explains. "If you think about the contemporary landscape, you see a lot of younger artists experimenting with this sort of deconstructivist style of abstraction, which is considered sort of post-canvas and about prying apart the physical elements of the canvas," DiQuinzio says. "I wanted to look at how this has happened historically and has been happening for a long time."